1. Prologue, Introduction
and “Winners and Losers” (The social problem posed by the meritocratic ethic.)
2. “’Great Because
Good’”: A Brief Moral History of Merit.
3. “The Rhetoric of
Rising”
4. “Credentialism: The
Last Acceptable Prejudice” (A critique of the competition for degrees from
highly rated colleges.)
5. “Success Ethics”
(The unjust and unfair mode of equating market success with human value and
human contributions. Success and virtue
are entirely separate goods. The problem
with the valorization of talent. The social harmfulness of the “I deserve”
mentality.)
6. “The Sorting
Machine” (How the college admission process sustains the meritocratic society,
and how to dismantle it.)
7. “Recognizing Work”
and “Merit and the Common Good” (The need to restore dignity of labor to
society, and some suggestions as to how to
accomplish that goal.)
Michael J. Sandel, The
Tyranny of Merit: What’s become of the Common Good (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2020)